Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/406

 France as it stoode in the yeare of our Lord 1598.’ Both of these volumes are admirable books of the guide-book description, and contain, moreover, much entertaining and instructive matter; the latter is especially distinguished by some valuable hints to the traveller on the best method for advantageously observing the manners and customs of foreign countries. Dallington was a gentleman of the privy chamber in ordinary to Prince Henry, and in receipt of a pension of 100l. (, Life of Henry, Prince of Wales, appendix, pp. 450, 467). Wood says that he filled the same office in Prince Charles's household. In 1624, on Prince Charles's recommendation, Dallington was appointed master of Charterhouse in succession to Francis Beaumont; and to the same benefactor he probably owed the knighthood which was conferred on him 30 Dec. in the same year. As early as 1601 Dallington had been incorporated at St. John's College, Oxford; but though he was now sixty-three years of age he was still only in deacon's orders, and it would seem as if some opposition to his election as master of Charterhouse was offered on this account, for at the same time the governors resolved that no future master should be elected under forty years of age, or who was not in holy orders of priesthood two years before his election, and having not more than one living, and that within thirty miles of London. While master, Dallington is said to have considerably improved the walks and gardens of Charterhouse, and to have introduced into the school the custom of chapter-verses, or versifying on passages of scriptures. In 1636 Dallington had grown so infirm that the governors appointed three persons to assist him in his duties of master. In the following year he died, seventy-six years old. Two years before his death Dallington had, at his own expense, built a schoolhouse in his native village, Geddington; he also gave the great bell of the parish church and twenty-four threepenny loaves every Sunday to twenty-four of the poor of the parish for ever; and by his will he left 300l. to be invested in behalf of the poor of the same village. In addition to the works mentioned above, Dallington published in 1613 a book entitled ‘Aphorismes Civill and Militarie, amplified with authorities, and exemplified with historie out of the first Quaterne of F. Guicciardine (a briefe inference upon Guicciardine's digression, in the fourth part of the first Quaterne of his Historie, forbidden the impression and effaced out of the originall by the Inquisition).’ A second edition of this book contained a translation of the inhibited digression.

[Fuller's Worthies of England (ed. 1662), p. 288; Smythe's History of the Charterhouse, p. 236; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 292; Bridges's Northamptonshire (1791), ii. 311.] 

DALLMEYER, JOHN HENRY (1830–1883), optician, was born 6 Sept. 1830, at Loxten, near Versmold, department of Minden in Westphalia. He was the second son of a landowner of that district, named William Dallmeyer, and his wife, Catherine Wilhelmina, née Meyer, of Hengelaye, Loxten. The elder Dallmeyer was a man of scientific abilities, and engaged in the hazardous and fruitless speculation of buying sterile ground and treating it with chemicals to make it fertile.

Dallmeyer continued at the elementary school of his native village until the age of fourteen, attracting so much attention by his intelligence and assiduity that it was decided to send him to a higher school, and in 1845 he proceeded to Osnabrück, where he was kindly received by a distant relative named Westmann Meyer, who, being himself childless, took him into his home and sent him to a school conducted by a Mr. Schuren, who had attained a great name as a teacher. He remained here for two years, working specially at geometry and mathematics. His bent for scientific work was now so evident that on leaving school he was at once apprenticed for three years to an optician at Osnabrück named Aklund, and here he quickly took the first place as a workman, so that at the end of his apprenticeship he had gone far beyond his master. From an early age Dallmeyer appears to have entertained the idea of coming to England, and he undertook, in the evenings, the correspondence of a commercial firm, by which he acquired the means to pay for English lessons twice a week.

Dallmeyer came to England about the middle of 1851. For a few weeks he sufferred great straits, but was helped by an old Osnabrück schoolfellow. After five weeks he found employment in the workshop of an optician named W. Hewitt, who had learned his trade under Andrew Ross, and who with his various employés shortly afterwards re-entered Ross's service. Dallmeyer's position in Ross's workshop appears at first to have been an unpleasant one. From his quiet and retiring ways he was dubbed ‘the gentleman,’ while his still very imperfect knowledge of the English language placed him at a great disadvantage. Disgusted with his position he sought other employment, and acted for a year as French and German correspon-